The idea of the conference, as gradually devel­oped and eventually expressed in its subtitle "The Study of Sepik Cultures in and for Modem Papua New Guinea," was to offer a framework for re­flecting, through precirculated papers, discus­sions, and this publication, on the role that the an­thropological research done so far or planned for the future in the Sepik might play in the young nation of Papua New Guinea. This was not, of course, seen as a matter of reducing anthropology to economic development, social work, or poli­tics. Rather, the idea was to consider what the study of traditional Sepik cultures, including his­torical questions, could contribute to an under­standing of the present situation and, from a broader perspective, to the building of a multieth­nic nation.

This topic might have been treated by a small group of scholars on the basis of examples drawn from their own or other people's research, but be­cause there was so much anthropological field­work going on in the Sepik we considered it more appropriate to put the question implied by the phrase "in and for modern Papua New Guinea" to everyone who had done research in the Sepik in recent times. By doing so, we felt, we could high­light the national framework within which all an­thropological research now takes place and at the same time obtain a relatively complete picture of the state of Sepik research that would also be of interest to the Papua New Guinea authorities.

It was decided that every anthropologist, geog­rapher, art historian, and linguist who had done fieldwork in the Sepik since about 1960, pub­lished about it, and remained actively in contact with the discipline would be invited. We defined "Sepik" as covering the whole triangle between the north coast (including the Schouten Islands), the border with Irian Jaya, and the lower northern slopes of the central mountain range, thus exclud­ing the Telefomin area even though it is part of the West Sepik Province but going beyond the East Sepik Province into the Ramu area of Madang Province.